The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [47]
Annie caught at the reality of the word. “Cancer? What kind?”
“Terminal.”
“Cancer?” cried Sam.
Clark whispered, “Get the name of Jack’s doctor. I could phone, see what’s going on.”
But the Cuban suddenly shouted again, “You called the cops on me, lady? You called the cops? Annie, I gotta go!”
“Call back,” she demanded. “I don’t know where in St. Louis he is!”
“Good bye!”
“Don’t hang up!”
There was a loud crackle in the phone.
Annie turned to her aunt. “Rook hung up.”
“Call him back.” Sam grabbed Annie’s arm.
Annie dialed the incoming number, but voice mail announced, “This is Evelyn Whitestone’s phone. Please leave me a message.” Then the line went dead.
Chapter 14
The Palm Beach Story
Sam said, “I told you he was weird, that Rafael Rook.”
Picking up the sashimi, Annie absently ate it whole. “He said he was in prison with Dad in Cuba.”
“Your poor dad. He would have hated that.”
“Anybody would have hated it.” Annie turned to Clark. “So he says Dad’s dying of cancer.”
“What kind?”
“He didn’t say.” Annie sat down on the bottom stair. “I remember one time when Dad told some suckers he was dying of cancer because he wanted to sell them this fake land and I flipped out because I believed he was dying and he told me it wasn’t true, it was just a trick, he was fine.”
Clark rubbed her back. “I’m sure he is fine.” He noted that they should all remember how Jack had pulled the same “I’m dying, buy my house cheap” trick in Savannah and had been arrested for it. “Dying’s not in his personality.”
Abruptly all the lights went out and they heard the porch door tearing loose. In the dark Malpy raced around the room barking wildly, begging to be picked up.
“Clark, I hope you and the Weather Channel are happy at last!” shouted Sam, upset by more than the weather. “Now it is a damn tornado.”
The screen door shattered loudly as it blew off the porch.
Clark called out through the darkness. “Get the dogs. Go to the basement!”
Grabbing up Teddy and Malpy, they felt their way down the steep steps to the old Pilgrim’s Rest cellar, where Sam had collected all the broken objects, old toys, cracked leftovers of past generations that she couldn’t squeeze up into the attic. Here in the cool stone space, Peregrines had hidden for over a hundred years from bad weather and other calamities, like Yankee invaders and teenaged parties with amplified music.
Between the furnace and three of Annie’s bicycles, illuminated in the beam of Sam’s large flashlight, they stood together, listening to the cracks of snapping trees overhead. Sam used her light to see her cell phone to call Georgette, who told her, “Thanks. I’m in my basement, sitting on a moldy beanbag.”
“Call me back every ten minutes.”
Malpy whimpered but Teddy fell quickly to sleep.
After a while, Sam started her imitation of Katherine Hepburn. “‘Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.’”
Because niece and uncle had lived for years with a woman who owned a movie store and who responded to life crises almost exclusively by quoting classic films, the inimitable Hepburn voice, even badly mimicked, was somehow as soothing as a lullaby.
“African Queen,” Annie said.
Howling wind tore a whole tree loose with a terrible noise; it crashed near the house. “Oh God,” moaned Sam. “This is scary.”
Clark began: “‘Fasten your seat belts.’”
Annie finished. “‘It’s going to be a bumpy night.’”
“You two are making fun of me, aren’t you?” Sam shined the flashlight in their faces.
Annie and Clark told her yes, they were, and made her laugh. On they went, thinking of more quotes for Sam, soothing her with the murmur of memory; it was what they had done for decades, watching old movies on the couch together, eating with chopsticks from their Chinese